Ignition 8 32-bit Vision Clients

Posted by Paul Scott, Last modified by Paul Scott on 01/10/2020 02:55 PM

As of Ignition 8, 32-bit Vision Client support was dropped; the availability of 32-bit Java Runtime Environments (JRE) will diminish overtime as the technology is slowly deprecated.

However, in an effort to aid architectures making heavy use of 32-bit hardware, Ignition 8.0.3+ includes some batch and bash scripts that can be used to launch 32-bit clients. These launchers are unsupported, but are useful in cases where 32-bit Vision Clients are the only option.

Prerequisites

The following steps must be repeated on each piece of hardware that will run a 32-bit client.

Install a JREThe hardware that will run Vision client must have a 32-bitJava 11 JRE installed. Earlier versions of Java (e.g., Java 8, Java 9, etc) will not work. You're free to use your vendor of choice, but as a suggestion, AdoptOpenJDK has some 32-bit versions (as of the time of this writing).

Set JAVA_HOME to the JREThis step varies based on the operating system that will be running the client. A quick web search should show you how to do this: "debian set java_home" or "windows set java_home"

Legacy Launchers

Using the Legacy Launchers involves retrieving a "legacyClient" file via one of the means listed below (based on operating system of the computer that will run the client)

Linux & Mac

Download the legacy launcherRun one of the following commands to download the legacyClient.sh file, replacing "localhost:8088" with the address of the gateway that's hosting the Vision project you wish to launch.

Run the LaunchClient file from terminal. The launcher will attempt to download a JAR from the gateway which will be used to run the Vision client.legacyClient.sh address=GATEWAY_ADDRESS scope=SCOPE windowmode=WINDOW_MODE project=PROJECT certificate=CERTIFICATE

GATEWAY_ADDRESS: The full address to the gateway

SCOPE: The Scope to launch, 'D' for Designer, 'C' for Vision Client (Note: without single quote)

WINDOW_MODE: The Window Mode to use, 'W' for windowed, 'F' for fullscreen.

PROJECT: The Name of the Project to Launch. A project by the name specified here must exist on the gateway before attempting to launch the client.

CERTIFICATE: The PEM certificate file to use with curl or wget. (curl is attempted first, wget if curl is not installed)

SKIP_CERT_CHECK: If this arg is supplied, certificate checking by curl or wget will not occur

JAVA ARGS: Any java args. (NOTE: No checking is done on validity before attempting to launch)

Windows

Download the legacy launcherUsing a web-browser, visit the following address to download the legacyClient.bat file, replacing "localhost:8088" with the address of the gateway that's hosting the Vision project you wish to launch.http://{gatewayAddress}:{gatewayPort}/system/nativelaunch?type=legacy&os=windows

Usage

run the LaunchClient file from command line. Running it for the first time on a system will take a moment, as the launcher has to download some necessary files from the gateway first.

A Word on SSL/TLS

SSL/TLS support is only available on linux/mac OS X for these launchers. Should a user wants to enable this feature, they must modify the legacyclient.bat to not download the launchclient.jar each time.

To Convert cert to a PEM cert for curl or wgetopenssl x509 -inform der -in certs.der -out certs.pemNOTE: you still need to have the x509 certificate in the ~/.ignition/clientlauncher-data/certificates directory